down
on the upside
written by matthew fritch, taken from magnet no. 46 sept/oct 98

somewhere between acquiring a broader musical palette
and bouts of oscar madness, elliott smith has become an unlikely pop
star. and he did it all by himself.

"hi, this is elliott smith and it's been 10 years.
congratulations." as the video camera's red light flickers out,
smith shoots a wry, sideways grin at me, obviously amused at the multimedia
invasion (well, me and the guy with the camera) going on in his dressing
room. he's just flatly delivered his line for a promotional spot marking
the anniversary of the venue where he's performing tonight.

smith shakes his head. "it's strange," he
says. "ever since i got here, they've been asking me to do that.
i've never even been here before."

lately, we've been seeing smith in all the unfamiliar
places: the academy awards, mtv, entertainment weekly. and now gracing
the cover of a lush, orchestrated pop record for the dreamworks mega-label.

"xo"
is the album, and its compositions appropriately conjure the intimacy
of handwritten notes, heartwarming and heartsick sentiments and, of
course, hugs and kiss-offs to lovers, friends and those who just don't
understand. whether smith's migration from portland, ore., to brooklyn
last year had any inspirational effect is a question that doesn't need
asking; new york city is imprinted upon the record like a silent partner's
songwriting credit, lyrically hovering in the background alongside the
cosmopolitan touches of piano, strings and brass arrangements. it's
safe to say that no one will call "xo" a folk record.

today, smith is in burgettstown, pa., a small, pasture-ized
cowtown somewhat near pittsburgh, but closer to nowhere in particular.
at the coca-cola star lake amphitheatre - site of neither lake nor star
(it's foggy) nor star-shaped lake brimming with soft drink - the polite
and soft-spoken 28-year-old singer/songwriter is on the third of four
dates supporting two popular purveyors of the new kitsch: beck and ben
folds five. as such, the security forces are on full alert; i spend
a lot of time explaining i'm a journalist to staff members who suspect
i'm going to cart off one of beck's oxygen tanks after i'm done stitching
shut the legs of folds' corduroys.

so we grab a couple of sierra nevadas from the amply
stocked cooler, take a left past the door marked "beck: yoga"
and walk out to a sun-drenched set of dilapidated wooden stairs near
the bakcstage loading dock. despite the june weather, smith retains
his omnipresent knit cap of baby blue and rounds out the ensemble with
olive pants and a plain black t-shirt, a blank variation on his more
familiar willie nelson or hank williams jerseys.

in light of the wardrobe and bill, i suggest that perhaps
tonight smith can lend beck the white suit he wore at the oscars. "beck
already has a white suit, i think," he says. "i became reminded
of that many times after the academy awards. i don't usually read my
press, but I did a couple times after that, and entertainment weekly
had a picture of me and the caption was something like, 'sedate beck
impersonator.' why? because of my white suit?"

the mere fact we're discussing comparative celebrity
fashion begs the more grounded question of whether smith's audience
is actually expanding. "i can't picture what would be my audience,"
he says. "i'm happy that some people seem to like it. i don't think
about that a whole lot - i just like to make up songs and play them.
i'm doing good to be able to do that. why complicate it?"

from our perch, we have a view of a basketball goal
where members of the beck and folds contingents are lazily bouncing
the ball off a lopsided rim. smith, too, has been the target of badly
aimed shots. if you believe what's been written, he's minnie driver's
shy, severely depressed boyfriend who was discovered in a coffeehouse
by gus van sant. or better yet, a spokesperson for the disenfranchised
fans who adore him; the ones who call out titles to songs smith himself
has forgotten, then jog his memeory by singing the first few bars. it's
all false, of course, except for the part about the fans, which speaks
volumes more than gossip and rumor. and it's the spokesperson role smith
probably resists most. remaining on the fringe seems integral to what
he does.

it's hard to imagine we'd be chatting up typically rock-star
topics such as popular ascent and the toss of outsider status without
telling the story of how mr. smith went to hollywood, which began when
the musician befriended filmmaker van sant. the pair soon discovered
they shared more than a portland residence and a mutual artistic admiration:
an interest in songwriting and home recording. so it was more asual
than unusual when van sant asked smith to contribute to teh soundtrack
for his movie, "good will hunting".

"at some point, he mentioned putting some songs
in the movie, but i had no idea there would be so many of them and that
they would be so prominent," smith says. iI ended up making up
one for it, and the rest were on other records."

"miss misery" earned the indie darling an
academy award nomination for best original song - filling out the ranks
of a category that included celine dion, michael bolton and trisha yearwood
- and lots of sympathetic support as an underdog to sink the warbling
beast from the great white north. smith was busy recording "xo"
at sunset sound in los angeles when he heard the news he'd been nominated
for what he terms "this bizarre award."

"i was just kind of shocked - i didn't see that
in my future at any point," he says, also admitting that the real-life
consequence of the whole affair was merely to slow down the recording
process.

the logistics of the award-show performance proved puzzling
for smith, a decidedly do-it-yourself kind of guy. he stumped the shows'
producers by asking for a chair (as sitting down is a more comfortable
position for playing acoustc guitar) to use during his song. initially
denying smith the simple prop, creative showbiz types came up with a
couple of ill-fated solutions. "i would have to sit behind this
moving panel during the trisha yearwood song," he says, "and
then it would dramatically raise up to reveal that i'd been sitting
here all that time." smith politely declined. "and then they
had another idea for me to sit on the steps of the stage - like a down-home
jamboree. 'c'mon people, follow me along in this song. i'm just hunkerin'
down on the steps.' that was just ridiculous."

one of smith's favorite memories of that night is dion's
overt friendliness and "super supportive" encouragement, telling
him not to be nervous and that she'd be listening to his beautiful song.
(smith's pristine impersonation of the canadian chanteuse, incidentally,
is one of my favorite memories of this month.) although quite a few
people felt an awkward joy in his one-night stand in the celluloid void
- award presenter madonna apparently one of them - smith claims it didn't
really feel like anything at all. "everything was in slow motion,"
he says. "and i didn't feel particularly nervous. i just felt like
i was in some odd dream that was probably meant for someone else. everyone
was really nice, but the point of the show is the show. it's certainly
not me. the point of it is to have a big parade of celebrities."

for smith, the aftershocks of the academy awards would
continue long after the designer gowns had been returned, after the
hors d'oeuvres had passed through the colons of the stars, after the
grinning spectre of james cameron's inflated bravado had ceased to haunt
the dreams of ordinary, godfearing citizens. and the effects weren't
necessarily desirable ones.

"i hung out with minnie driver in l.a., which was
picked up as some sort of news item, as if we were a couple, which was
not true," he says. a little thing like the truth, however, didn't
prevent the masters of insinuation, tv tabloid american home journal,
from taking separate pictures of smith and driver and splicing them
together. "i really like her, but it wasn't like that," he
says. "it didn't make my girlfriend really happy."

ironically, smith has recently taken to excluding "miss
misery" from his set list, a point of consternation among new fans
won over by the soundtrack and modern-rock radio airplay. a surprising
decision, considering that smith claims to eschew the politics of the
music-making business. "i think it's great when people do what
they feel is right," smith explains. "and sometimes that involves
politics... To me, the fact that 'miss misery' is associated with the
academy awards makes it less of a candidate for my live show. it's attached
to too much baggage."

a valid point, but is not playing a hit song just as
good as admitting defeat - essentially being limited by the power of
popular opinion?

"anytime that some sort of agenda gets applied
to music, i think it's a drag," he says. "music is worth doing
just because. it doesn't have to be justified by some political point
of view, and it's kind of insulting to the music to make it a tool for
something else."

smith's logic is mostly correct. movies and music too
often blend into a heady popularity that enhances neither one. although
the "good will hunting" soundtrack sold close to 200,000 copies
and exposed smith to a billion pepole, hollywood can be a gravy train
that makes only one abrupt, spotlit stop for musicians. and how much
is the academy awards about music, anyway?

"none," smith replies. "but how much
is it about movies?"

in burgettstown, the spaghetti-strapped teenage girls
and big-pantsed boys gathering at the t-shirt and soft-pretzel stands
aren't really paying much attention to elliott smith, whoever that is.

smith is backed tonight by quasi, the portland duo of
drummer janet weiss (also of sleater-kinney) and bassist sam coomes
(ex-heatmiser). smith sports an electric guitar in place of his more
familiar acoustic, and the trio drives quickly through a half-hour set
mostly comprised of smith's more "rock" material.

a couple days later, i'm in a coffee shop talking to
weiss and coomes in philadelpia. quasi has just finished performing
an energetic set at a bar down the street. a bar, coincidentally, where
smith played to a sold-out crowd of fervent fans just a few months ago.
we get around to talking about the more surreal, and even disturbing,
aspects of smith's recent tour: that all the venues looked exactly the
same and that each concert seemed to be affiliated with a certain softdrink
giant.

"there's such a small percentage of it that's about
the music," weiss says. "most of it's about sponsors and all
these people and record labels and who's backstage. it's not that fun."

weiss' comments remind me of what smith says about the
academy awards and echoes some of his thoughts about the tour as well.

"i like playing with beck and ben," smith
says. "but , of course, i prefer to play in smaller places, where
people come to see me play, instead of a big place, looking out over
a sea of people who want to go snowboarding. don't make that the big
blow-up quote, i don't want people to think - "

that you don't want to be playing these big tours?

"yeah."

born in omaha, neb., smith grew up in dallas with his
mother and stepfather. family problems led to his relocation at age
14 to portland, where he lived with his father, who encouraged him to
play the guitar. smith began to experiment with four-track recording;
one remnant from this high-school songwriting days, "condor ave,"
survives on smiths' first solo album, "roman candle."

financial limitations and a general disinterest in higher
education don't fully explain his last-minute application and acceptance
to hampshire college in massachusetts, an expensive, ultra-liberal school
with no grades and no majors. he sheepishly admits to merely following
his high-school girlfriend. a rookie mistake in the field of love, perhaps,
and also a costly endeavor - only recently have the student loans been
paid off - it was nevertheless the setting where smith would begin to
chart a musical course with classmate neil gust. the duo's collegiate
collaborations only went as far as occasional acoustic shows about town,
but a post-graduate return to portland sparked loftier ambitions - for
gust, at least. smith had other ideas.

"neil wanted to start a band and i did too, but
i'd talked myself out of it at that point," says smith. "i
wanted to be a fireman. i came around to fireman by the process of elimination,
looking for something that was actually, definitely worthwhile to do.
i wanted to be free to do what i wanted to do. which meant if it had
to be a straight job, it had to be one with a lot of free time, because
i was going to play music regardless. it didn't occur to me to try to
get ahead."

while singing firemen may very well have been in demand
at the time in some place (off broadway? parisian symbolist revues?),
in portland, smith and gust settled for forming a group with a fiery
name. heatmiser, a loud and often troubled rock outfit that was pretty
much waht you'd expect of a northwestern band in the early '90s. four
releases on the frontier label established both smith and gust who shared
vocal and songwriting duties - as considerable talents. however, the
band's ranks weren't quite as tight as its fuzzed-out, rhythmic music.
after heatmiser signed to virgin in 1996 and recorded "mic city
sons", the band promptly called it quits, stranding its most varied
and surprisingly melodic effort. according to coomes, who filled in
on bass for heatmiser's last album and tour, the band had broken up
at least three times during his brief membership. but even as smith
was co-piloting heatmiser's abrasive trajectory, it was apparent that
he had hidden his love away in a quieter, more introspective place.

"when i was on tour with [heatmiser], he brought
an acoustic guitar," coomes says. "and after we'd play a show,
he'd hole himself up and practice these elaborate guitar things. i never
heard him play like that before."

there were reasons for smith's closely guarded secret.
not only was he liable to be set up up for one of modern music's most
infamous scenarios - wherein a member of loud-rock band flounders on
what's perceived to be limp solo material - the setting seemed all wrong.

"the idea of playing [my music] for people didn't
occur to me," says smith, "because at the time it was the
northwest - mudhoney and nirvana - and going out to play an acoustic
show was like crawling out on a limb and begging for it to be sawed
off."

history would soon prove that smith should never have
hesitated. "for a long time, i played to five people and a guy
in the back playing darts," smith says. "so i got used to
a kind of confrontational thing, not so much in a negative way, but
sort of like, 'i'm really gonna play my songs no matter what happens
here in this bar and make sure to do them in a way so that there's something
that must be good about them.' now it's sort of more like, 'play this
song, play that song.'"

as smith started making money from his own shows, he
was able to quit jobs, which included stints as a baker and construction
worker, and after much coaxing by friends, put nine songs to tape for
a possible single on the cavity search label. "i made (cavity search)
a tape," he says, "and then they called back and said, 'we
want to put it out.' i said, 'all right. which songs?' they were like,
'we want to put it out.'"

these nine songs, recorded on a four-track in the basement,
became 1994's slow-burning "roman candle". "things have
sort of gone like that for me," he says. "that's why it's
hard for me to talk about things that have happened to me, because so
little of it has been my doing. i've been the fortunate beneficiary
of happy accidents." he pauses for a moment, then adds, "some
of it's my doing - i make up some songs, i guess."

ah, the songs. if smith has indeed led a charmed life
fraught with unexpected successes and the pitfalls brought on by supportive
benefactors, it certainly isn't reflected in his near-whispered songs.
bleak inner monologues confess tales of broken hearts, drug addiction
and social isolation in a world where the bartender's last call is the
solitary drinker's death knell. all imagery with which others have depicted
him as the hopelessly romantic, jukie saint. i get to know him as a
man who's simply fond of his metaphors.

"with a very simple change of device, i'm two opposite
things to people," he says. "i mean, you can't even understand
your neighbor much less someone you saw on a television program. and
i'm not necessarily talking about msyelf, but people form such strong
and narrow opinions of people, and they're going on such litttle information.
the thing that's fun for me is to make parallels between things. that's
more interesting to me, at the moment anyway, than writing really straight
songs about a particular person or event. metaphors work a lot better
when you don't draw attention to the fact that they're metaphors. talking
about drugs - and why people do drugs and how they feel about it - just
leads you to the same things as talking about relationships and people
in love."

particularly circumispect is smiths' 1995 self-titled
album. songs like "needle in the hay" and "the white
lady loves you more" suggest a more literal interpretation of the
narcotic imagery, one that places the singer uncomfortably close to
his subject.

"drugs were on my mind, but they wren't only on
my mind because of my involvement with them," he says. "they
were partly on my mind because it's a very useful device to talk about
other things that are harder to name. if you can't name the big hing,
you have to break it apart into small things with names and build it
back up using the small things."

smith, pleased with his explanation, lets loose a broad
smile that quickly disappears when I bring up folk music.

"i really like folk music, but i don't like it
any more than any other style," he says. "it's sort of like
punk - as a style, it belongs to something in the past. as a way of
life, it's something very alive."

the lazy description of smith's music also spawned a
seemingly endless stream of comparisons to an urban folk singer of a
different era, paul simon. the further similarity between the two -
smiths "good will hunting" contributions being analogous to
simon's for "the graduate" - merely added fuel to the fire.

"that used to really get on my nerves," he
says. "but now I feel bad for letting it rub me the wrong way,
because i kind of ran my mouth off about paul simon, and it wasn't very
nice." smith is most likely referring to a 1995 interview in australian
fanzine "spunk", wherein he called simon's lyrics "corny."
unlike simon, smith is uncomfortable with being a generational mouthpiece;
his aren't protest songs. "when people hear acoustic music,"
says smith, "they say, 'oh, he sounds like paul simon,' or 'oh,
a man with a guitar, he must be playing in order to point out things
that are wrong with the world.' which isn't necersarily true. people
can play alone just because they love playing music."

with "xo", smith buries the folk categorization
under a perfectly constructed mess of beautiful sounds. "i was
paying mroe attention to the musical side of things than i had before,
just because i could," hes says. "there was going to be more
tracks and resources, and it was an opportunity to build up bigger soundscapes."

from the melodic pop of "bled white" and the
reimagining of "eleanor rigby" with beach boys vocal harmonies
on "oh well, okay" to the funky, brassed-off "a question
mark" and a pair of contemplative waltzes, "xo" shows
smith coming out of his shell and blossoming in a variety of musical
styles. in conversation, smith afffects an unambitious, laid-back attitude
toward his music; he's being modest. On "xo," as on all of
his records, smith is responsible for almost every sound, with the notable
exceptions of a few drum tracks laid down by drummer joey waronker (beck,
r.e.m.) and some chamberlain parts by session musician jon brion. smith
would have produced the album, too, but "wearing all the hats,"
he says, "makes it slow." as such, tom rothrock and rob schnapf
(who mixed 1997's "either/or" and produced records
by beck and foo fighters) lent a hand.

despite his musical prowess, shop talk with smith never
gets too technical. a year of piano lessons when he was 10 is the extent
of his formal training. most of his songs were written on his girlfriend's
unwittingly detuned guitar. he currently doesn't have a guitar of his
own, the one his father gave him is, he says, "too nice."

"from four-track to string arrangements in a couple
albums, that's one thing that i really like about him," says coomes.
"he's always trying to grow as a musican, and very few people have
that kind of discipline."

before leaving burgettstown, i notice the set list torn
into thing strips and scattered on the dressing-room table. prior to
smith's performance, i'm told, it had been tossed in the air and reassembled
into a random order. it works well as one of smith's metaphors, exemplifying
an unpretentious aesthetic that leaves a lot to chance.

"i don't really have any goals specifically,"
he says. "just to write more songs and play. i have one true love.
maybe two - a person, too."

were i not certain of his sincerity, smith's words would
seem almost naive.

"there's not many things i can think of doing that
really have a point to them, there's just things that i think are worthwhile
doing. music is one."